[BRIEF NOTE] The wrong kind of smart mobs

[rfmcdpei]

pompe's speculations on whether or not technology is enabling pack attacks reminds me, worryingly, of David Grossman's thesis in his On Killing that games technology and modern films are helping to desensitize people to violence.

Comments

[autopope]

You need to google on the term "happy slapping" (which isn't happy and isn't slapping).

[princeofcairo]

I haven't read Grossman, but I strongly suspect that he's full of balloon juice. Violence desensitizes people to violence. Pretend violence has no effect whatsoever, as can be determined by examining the nonstop history of violent entertainments going back to, say, Seneca.

If anything, pretend violence is correlated with increased sensitivity; as our technology has gotten better at simulating violence, our society has increasingly removed real violence from our day-to-day existence, and increasingly policed it out of our children's entertainment. See, on this topic, Harold Schechter's Savage Pastimes.

[ex_taem158]

The Economist noted that, since the beginning of violent games (around the early 90's), violent crime in the West has actually fallen - a reverse, I believe, of the trend in the past few decades before that. I think. Certainly the first part of what I just wrote.